Boca Lagunillas, located some 40 kilometers northwest of Zihuatanejo, is a small, dusty, one street poor village of approximately 150 souls, whose living is derived from basic agriculture: the raising of pigs, cattle, corn, mangoes, coconuts, sorghum (for the animals); and small family-size plots of chiles, tomatoes and vegetables grown for individual needs. Children tend to drop out of school after primary school. Some adults can’t even sign their names nor can they read or write – but each dwelling has a television set. There are also two video games in one of the village’s three tiendas.
To this hamlet, ten years ago, arrived Sandra McNair, a single gringa, who built herself a home amidst a coconut huerta bordered by an estuary teeming with pelicans, gray and white herons, ducks, loons, sandpipers, iguanas, woodpeckers. She also acquired three horses, two dogs, three cats and hired local campesinos to clear brush, erect fences, plant and irrigate organic fruit trees and vegetables.
Sandra began driving the then-pristine beach between Boca and Majahua (another small settlement on the southern end), collecting trash, a semi-monthly ritual with a dozen local children aged seven to twelve helping, each wearing a t-shirt with the words Banda de Basura. (The shirts were provided by Mark Rudin, a printer from Oregon, who built himself a house there.) The villagers were initially curious and amazed and they continue to be baffled to this day, as no one had ever even thought of picking up trash on their own beach.
Sandra’s personal involvement with the locals has recently taken an even more substantial project: the creation of a community center, where everyone can participate in multi-cultural activities. She was given permission to utilize a 25-year-old abandoned, crumbling mud-and-sticks structure, about 10 feet by 30 feet in size, that once belonged to a government-subsidized tienda. A local electrician installed indoor and outdoor lighting and a fresh coat of paint was applied to the dilapidated building.
Sandra is quite realistic about the venture: “If the community fails to appreciate and rally for its own good, it won’t be said that I failed to try.” On Christmas Eve, a large tree that stands in front of the old store was strung with lights and multi-colored balloons to welcome the more than 50 children of all ages who decimated four candy-filled piñatas. Each child was also presented a toy or a gift donated by Sandra and a mother-and-daughter team Jill and Heidi Hausner, owners of a nearby bed-and-breakfast, Abadia, at Majahua.
Spanish and English language books designed for the young, various visual aids (maps, puzzles, coloring books) and art supplies have been donated from several sources and Sandra plans to teach basic English through art to those interested. She has also invited locals to read to the children from those books. The local AA chapter has been invited to hold its regular meetings there. Also, she is looking for help to inoculate and neuter all the dogs from the village free of charge.
In order to financially support the enterprise, Sandra has other community-centered projects in mind, “perhaps have some of the women embroider table napkins, pillow cases or tortilla cloth holders whose sale would return to the center. There are some women here,” she continued, “who weave hammocks or sew. The possibilities exist for other crafts as well but the interest and motivation must begin from the villagers themselves if the center is to be successful for everyone here.”
Only a month ago, Sandra purchased a 100-pound bag of modeling clay while in Michoacan and her students created a wide variety of products—cups, bowls, ash trays, receptacles, animals, masks—which were fired in one of the village’s hornos that are used as baking ovens.
Local support is at best marginal at this time. Many welcome the venture, but there is apathy of course, “as everyone is watching with a wait-and-see attitude [to the project] with a sense of ‘let things remains as they have [always] been so traditionally engrained for generations in such poor villages throughout Mexico,” she added.
It is apparent that the young are the most enthusiastic: as many as 20 children are attending twice-weekly classes which Sandra initiated in late January 2006; and those pupils are also collecting aluminum cans and assorted trash throughout the village on their own initiative.
Will there be eventually a telephone line and a computer there one day (as no telephone service is now available) we asked Sandra, who believes that “all things are possible.” There is hard road ahead for Sandra and the citizens of Boca Lagunillas, but one, we hope, that will bring a sense of achievement, pride and the knowledge that dreams can be made real.
